.T'i <5(^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 916 369 A 



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Our Peril on the 
Eastern Front 



Allied Victory in the West Barren Unless 

Slav Peoples to the East are Freed from 

German Domination and Formed 

Into Strong Independent 

Barrier States 



BY 

CLARENCE L. SPEED 



THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB 

OF CHICAGO 

1918 



After you have read this pamphlet, please pass it on in order that 
the message it carries may reach the largest number of persons 



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FOREWORD 

A few months ago the cause of democracy was in dire and direct 
peril on the Western Front. German armies were driving victoriously 
forward. German troops were filled with enthusiasm and the will to 
win. There was imminent danger that the British and French armies 
would be separated and crushed in detail, and the Allied cause lost in 
military defeat before America could make her weight felt. 

Today this immediate peril has disappeared. German armies are in 
retreat. German soldiers are dispirited. American millions are pour- 
ing into France, full of fighting enthusiasm. British and French alike 
have been rejuvenated in spirit. Prospects now are bright for a decisive 
military victory for tlie Allied cause. 

Nevertheless there remains great danger that Germany will win this 
war. The Central Powers have gained hundreds of thousands of square 
miles of territory and power over millions of people by their victories 
on the Eastern Front. Even before the war they had millions of Slavs 
imder their control. All Russia, as matters now stand, lies open to 
Teutonic domination and exploitation unless the Allies give effective 
assistance. 

Our greatest peril now lies on the Eastern Front. After decisively 
defeating Germany in the West the Allies must dictate a peace which 
will force her to disgorge all she has gained in the East. They must go 
further and force Austria-Hungary to set free the Slav peoples — Czecho- 
slovaks of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia; Jugo-Slavs comprising the 
Slovenes, Croatians, Dalmatians and Serbs; the Poles and Ruthenes of 
Galicia, and the Rumanians of Transylvania and part of Bukowina — 
and consent to their formation into independent barrier states which 
will forever bar Teutonic expansion to the Eastward. 

If the Allies do not do this, Germany will in time consolidate and 
organize these possessions, prepare to feed herself despite all blockades, 
form an army twice the size of the one she was able to put into the field 
in this war, and strike again when she is ready. 

America in times past has paid little attention to the situation in 
Eastern Europe. The time has come when every American should study 
this complicated question, realize its extreme importance in connection 
with the future safety of the world, and demand that no peace be made 
which will leave the Central Powers in a position to prepare for a 
future and mightier war for world conquest. 

Democracies can only fight for causes which are approved by the 
masses of their people. They cannot be driven into war at the behest of 
a ruler. Those who make peace for democracies must be guided by the 
wishes of their peoples. It is the duty of every individual American to 
know the facts and think clearly and to demand first a crushing military 
victory on the Western Front and then a peace which shall remove 
forever the German menace to world safety on the Eastern Front. 

[Fo?^ map, and brief sketches of the nations held in bondage by the Central 
PowerSj see Appendix.] 



■5 



I 

GERMANY BATTLES TO KEEP LOOT IN EAST 

Fifty-five million souls have been reduced to virtual slavery and 
494,552 square miles of territory have been overrun by the Germans as 
a result of the war on the Eastern Front. From the Arctic Ocean to the 
Black Sea the heavy hand of German domination has been laid upon 
conquered peoples. A territory more than twice the size of the present 
German Empire has come under German rule, and the population of 
the German Empire itself is but a few millions greater than that of the 
lands which have fallen a prey to the Kaiser's armies or his intriguing 
diplomats. 

Germany can no longer hope for victory on the Western Front. The 
weight of America's millions at last is beginning to be felt, and the 
Kaiser's legions are moving backward. But Germany has not lost hope 
of keeping what she has gained on the Eastern Front. She believes that 
the attention of the Allies can be distracted by large concessions in the 
West, and that her diplomats will succeed where her armies have failed, 
so that she will be able to retain her conquests to the East, organize and 
develop them with German efficiency, and then, when the time is ripe, 
strike again with a force which will be irresistible. 

The lands which have come under absolute German dominion as a 
result of the war are:* 

Area in Sq. Miles Population 

Russian Poland 49,130 11,500,000 

Ukrainia 163,249 26,500,000 

Rumania 50,720 6,850,000 

Serbia 35,000 4,000,000 

494,552 55,250,000 

In addition the whole of Russia and Siberia will remain open to 
German exploitation imless the Allied and Czecho-Slovak armies are 
successful in expelling the troops of the Central Powers. 

The area of the German Empire itself before the war was but 208,- 
780 square miles, and its population was about 68,000,000. Austria- 
Hungary, its ally and practical vassal, has an area of 238,977 square 
miles and a population of about 53,000,000. 

Germany inveigled poor deluded and disorganized Russia into a 
peace on the basis of no annexations and no indenmties, and then pro- 
ceeded to take what she wanted on one pretext or another in the guise 
of setting up separate states whose independence would be but a polit- 
ical fiction. Finland she induced to revolt, and then sent German troops 
in to help Finland against the Russia with which she was at peace. The 
result is that Finland now is absolutely dominated by Germany; the 





Area b Sq. Miles 


Population 


Finland 


144,253 


3,000,000 


Esthonia ... 


7,718 


500,000 


Livonia 


18,160 


1,500,000 


Courland ... 


10,535 


750,000 


Kovno 


15,687 


1,750,000 



•Figures from 1910 Edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica, corrected and 
estimated to round numbers, taking: into account natural increase in popu- 
lation and parts of provinces, where boundaries are indefinite. Hj TrWUlMF 



JAN 10 1919 



4 * Our Peril on the Eastern Front 

Kaiser's troops are in control, and plans are under way to make Finland 
an "independent" nation with a HohenzoUern prince on the throne. 

The Russian provinces of Esthonia, Livonia, Courland and Kovno, 
lying along the Baltic, Germany proceeded to grab outright, and now 
proposes to annex directly to the German Empire. This, with German 
domination of Finland, will make the Baltic practically a German lake. 

Poland is to be another "independent" state, if the German plans do 
not miscarry, with a German or Austrian prince as king. Ukrainia, with 
the exception of Poland, the richest part of Russia, is now nominally a 
republic, but German troops are in control and already there is talk of 
making it a kingdom ruled by a German prince. Rumania was forced 
to make a peace which gave Germany practical control, and since the 
treaty was signed Germany has been making new and harder conditions 
all the time and enforcing them at the point of the bayonet. Poor little 
Serbia, though its shattered armies are still valiantly fighting, is abso- 
lutely overrun by the enemy. No doubt the peace terms for it will be 
harshest of all, unless Germany is beaten on the Western Front. 

Pause and consider for a moment what these conquests mean if Ger- 
many is allowed to keep and consolidate them. From Finland and the 
Russian provinces along the Baltic Germany has gained vast wealth in 
timber and complete freedom from any rival trade. From Poland she 
has gained a well developed industrial and agricultural region, amply 
able to add greatly to her ability to make war in the future. From the 
Ukraine and Rumania, the grainary of Europe, she will have gained 
cereals which would make her independent of the outside world, and 
oils and minerals in such vast quantities that practically the whole con- 
tinental European supply would be in her grasp. From Serbia she has 
gained the open door to the Orient through her vassal states of Bulgaria 
and Turkey. 

From of all these states Germany will have gained an industrious 
and virile population which, if organized mider the German plan, would 
furnish an addition of some 8,000,000 men to Germany's armies. The 
Central Powers, then, if allowed to keep these conquests, would be able, 
after a few years of rest and recuperation, to put an army of 30,000,000 
men in the field, to feed and clothe them without calling upon the out- 
side world, and to so dominate the avenues of communication that the 
remainder of the world would be at their mercy when they chose to 
strike again. 

Laying aside all humanitarian reasons, that is why America and her 
allies cannot afford to make a peace until German militarism has been 
destroyed. Even if we could stand by and see fifty million people en- 
slaved in Eastern Europe, we cannot, nor can any other nation which 
hopes in future to live in peace and security, dare make a peace which 
will give an uncrushed Germany an opportunity to organize such a vast 
territory and population into a military machine beside which the pres- 
ent German armies arc dwarfed, and strike again for world conquest 
when the time is ripe. 



II 

STRANGUNG OF RUSSIA SOUGHT BY GERMANY 

Russia, with its millions of square miles of undeveloped territory in 
Europe and Asia, and its remaining 130,000,000 inhabitants, will be 
cut off from the open sea and economically strangled by Germany if 
the Kaiser is allowed to keep the vast territories he has taken possession 
of by force of arms and intrigue on the Eastern Front. 

With Finland and the Baltic provinces in Germany's possession, 
Russia will be cut off from the Baltic except for the port of Petrograd, 
and there is no assurance that Germany, if allowed to do so by the 
Allies, will not find some excuse for taking possession of that city. 

Domination by Germany of the Ukraine and the territory seized by 
it with the aid of German and Austrian troops, will cut Russia off from 
the Black Sea, and communication with the outside world by water in 
that direction. Only the Pacific Ocean, separated from the main por- 
tion by thousands of miles of railroad, will remain as an export and 
import outlet free from German domination. 

Thus will the whole of Russia, the vastest field for industrial and 
commercial development left on the globe, be at the mercy of German 
exploitation. Russia will, to all intents and purposes, have ceased to 
be a European nation. It will have no communication with Western 
Europe except through German controlled lands. It will pot be able to 
ship its grain Westward except by permission of Germany. Nor will it 
be able to import the vast amount of agricultural and industrial machin- 
ery it must have except from Germany or through Germany, except 
over the single-track 8,000-mile long Trans-Siberian Railroad to the 
Pacific Coast. 

Russian history, for ages, has been made by the efforts of this semi- 
Asiatic people, endeavoring to embrace European civilization, to expand 
their territories toward warm water. It has been counterbalanced by the 
German and Austrian "Drang nach Osten" or "pust toward the East," 
which expresses the imperialistic aims of the Teutonic countries. They 
have long recognized that their future lay toward the East, where the 
lands were peopled by a Slavic population and were ripe for exploita- 
tion, commercially or through out and out conquest. 

With the collapse of Russia as a military power the great barrier to 
the "Drang nach Osten" is removed. Even in the days before the war, 
when the Czar and his Cossacks offered something like real opposition 
t» German military encroachment, the German commercial interests had 
penetrated Russia to such an extent that a large section of the business 
of the Czar's empire was under German control. 



6 Our Peril on the Eastern Front 

No less successful had been the German secret propaganda. Court 
circles, headed by the German-born Czarina, were notoriously pro-Ger- 
man. Official circles in the army were affected, and such was the 
German hold on business interests that the production of war supplies 
by Russia was, for a long time, almost impossible. 

If Germany, because of its proximity and because of its nationally 
supported spy and commercial systems, was able thus to dominate 
Russia before the war, think what it will be able to do now unless the 
Allied nations, by a smashing victory, force it to disgorge the spoils it 
has taken in the East. 

The great export ports of the Baltic, and the ports of the Black Sea 
will be in German hands if, by any chicanery, Germany can persuade 
the victorious Allies to allow her to keep possession of them. Constan- 
tinople will be ruled by Germany's vassal state, Turkey, unless the 
Allies force Turkey out of Europe. All Russian goods will thus either 
have to pass through Germany or land controlled by Germany or take 
the tremendously expensive Pacific route. The Kaiser's merchants will 
have first call on everything which Russia will have to sell, and the 
Kaiser's manufacturers will have everything their own way in supplying 
the things which Russia will need to buy. 

German capital will build Russian factories and railroads, develop 
Russian mines and forests, and furnish the machinery for Russian agri- 
culture. German merchants will become established all through Russia, 
and will buy their goods from Germany. German "kultur" will be 
imposed upon the Russian peasant, and Germany as a whole will grow 
rich through this monopoly of Russian trade and industry. 

It may go even further. Powerful Germany, no doubt, will find 
additional excuses for actually taking territory away from weak and 
disorganized Russia. Every time some exasperated Russian explodes a 
bomb under some German diplomat, the Kaiser will likely enough use 
it as a pretext for seizing another Russian province. 

The Czar's wall of Cossacks has been removed. Nothing will re- 
main, unless German militarism is crushed, to prevent the more or less 
gradual subjection of 180,000,000 people of non-Teutonic races, and 
their exploitation for the benefit of the German privileged class. Ger- 
many will see to it that there is no Eastern Front the next time she sets 
out to fight the nations of Western Europe for complete domination of 
the world. 

Russia is a long ways from the United States. Most of the people of 
America are disappointed with the way Russia collapsed and failed the 
Allies in the war. 



Our Peril on the Eastern Front 7 

"What concern is it of ours what happens to Russia?" is the question 
one hears on many sides. 

The concern is just this: 

A Germany with predatory ideals allowed to despoil Russia will 
become so powerful that no nation or combination of nations can 
oppose it when next it is ready to strike. 

It will have ample funds for financing its next world war. 

It will have such enormous resources that no blockade can interfere 
with its supply of food and munitions. 

Such a Germany is a direct menace to the United States because it 
sees in this country its greatest rival in world trade; and Germany, gone 
mad, cannot conceive of commercial rivalry divorced from political and 
military rivalry. And so when Germany strikes again, it will strike the 
United States; and one nation or the other must perish. 

The United States, in common with its Allies, must see to it now 
that no peace is made with Germany which will leave it in a position 
ever to strike again as it did in August, 1914. 

Therefore there can be no peace until Germany has been forced to 
disgorge all it has gained on the Eastern Front, and more. 



Ill 

GERMANY STRIPS RUSSIA OF NECESSARY RESOURCES 

It is not just square miles of territory that Germany takes when she 
wins a war. Germany is very careful, when she takes territory, to take 
just that part which will most cripple her neighbors, and make them 
least able in future to resist her aggression in a commercial and military 
way. 

Thus in 1870, when Germany had France at her mercy, she took 
Alsace-Lorraine. These provinces contained what was then thought to 
be all the iron ore deposits in France. Since then other deposits have 
been discovered and developed in the Briey basin, and now Germany is 
seeking to take that region. Likewise all the coal and iron of Belgium 
and the coal of Northern France now are in German hands. 

So it is with Russia. German leaders realize that the whole of Russia 
cannot be taken over right now. Russia is too vast to be swallowed and 
digested all at once. So Germany plans to take now those portions of 
Russia which are richest in natural resources and industrial develop- 
ment. Thus the remainder of the vast coimtry will be reduced to im- 
potence, and made dependent entirely upon Germany for the things 
which make for individual progress in modem times. 

In carrying out this policy the seizure of Poland and the Ukraine 
are Germany's trump cards right now. Poland, before it was devastated 
by the Germans, was the chief industrial region of Russia, and the 
Ukraine a«d portions of the Caucasus which the Germans are trying 
to control, contain the greatest part of Russia's developed natural 
wealth — coal, iron, copper and oils — and in addition its chief agri- 
cultural resources, which four years of short rations have taught Ger- 
many to consider as important as coal and iron. 

The case of Poland is one which particularly merits the attention 
of the United States and the Allied nations. Poland was a great nation 
when the states now composing the German Empire were weak princi- 
palities with no sense of national unity. Despite more than a century 
of oppression the Poles still retain their language, their customs and 
their sense of national unity. They are capable of being converted into 
a strong and virile and independent nation, if Germany's strangle hold 
can be broken, and an independent Poland will do much to block a 
predatory Germany's military and commercial progress toward the East. 

Poland, it will be remembered, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, 
was partitioned among Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Russia oppressed 
the Poles, sometimes brutally, but made no effort to cause them to cease 
being Poles. Austria in the Polish province of Galicia, adopted a more 



Our Peril on the Eastern Front 9 

liberal attitude, allowing the Polish language and customs to be used, 
and there was comparatively little friction. But Prussia set out upon a 
deliberate policy to cause the Polish language to be forgotten, to drive 
Poles from the higher offices and finally to oust them from ownership 
of land and to Germanize that part of Poland which fell to her share 
so completely that the very name of Poland would be forgotten. 

Prussia, despite a century of persecution, failed. But it learned a 
new lesson. It learned that a Pole ceased to be a Pole only when he 
was dead. Therefore when Germany overran Russian Poland, it saw 
to it that there were as many dead Poles as possible. 

Through starvation and through deliberate wholesale murder Ger- 
many set out to depopulate Poland, and lay all this region open to 
German immigration and colonization. We have ample testimony to 
the effect that hundreds of thousands of Poles met death by actual starv- 
ation. The factories in the industrial centers were closed, and Polish 
workmen were- forced to go into Germany to work to keep from starv- 
ing. Germany would not even let Polish mills grind Polish grain, but 
forced the Poles to ship their grain to Germany to be milled, and then 
whatever flour Germany did not seize, was shipped back to the people 
who grew the grain. 

It is plain that Germany, if allowed to keep possession of all 
Poland, plans so to destroy the nation that there will no longer be a 
compact Polish people with national aspirations able to oppose it. 
Poland is to be colonized from Germany and its industrial resources 
allowed to reopen only when they have been thoroughly Germanized. 

The United States, aside from the threat to its future safety if a 
predatory Germany is allowed to extend its empire, will see a great 
nation — one which has fought for freedom as valiantl»y as America 
itself did — practically wiped off the face of the earth unless the Kaiser's 
hold on Poland is broken. 

Ukrainia furnishes the greater part of the iron and coal for all 
European Russia. It furnishes most of Russia's vast wheat exports — 
more than enough to make Germany independent of the rest of the 
world. It furnishes the greater part of Russian sugar, of Russian oil 
and Russian copper. If Germany is allowed to take possession of all 
these, Russia would be placed in a position where she never again could 
assert her rights against Germany. The German Empire would be 
practically doubled in population, more than doubled in area, and 
would have a monopoly on the iron with which to make shells and on 
the oils so indispensable for modern war. Italy is without metals. 
France will be if Germany can keep only a little French territory and 
Belgium. Russia will be practically so, if Germany keeps what it has 



10 Our Peril on the Eastern Front 

in its clutches right now. Nowhere in Continental Europe will there be 
a nation with fuel and iron to wage a war of self defense, and in times 
of peace they will all be at the commercial mercy of a soulless Ger- 
many. 

The result will be that only England and the United States will 
remain of the great nations with fuel and iron at their disposal. Ger- 
many will have 140,000,000 people to draw upon for soldiers instead 
of 70,000,000, Another hundred million will be available to Germany 
through Turkey and the enlarged Austria and Bulgaria, which are even 
now Germany's vassals. 

No nation will be in a position to resist the mighty forces that a 
predatory Germany would be able to throw into the field for the next 
war — perhaps twenty years hence. No other Continental nation would 
be able to furnish the raw material for its own guns and shells. Ger- 
many, if the Allies do not prevent it by force, would simply consolidate 
its present conquests, organize and train their manhood, and, when it 
is ready, set out to conquer all Europe and Asia, and perhaps even 
America. 

The United States cannot afford to let predatory and soulless Ger- 
many remain in this commanding position. Leaving aside all motives 
of humanity and regard for the rights of other peoples, it must, if it 
itself hopes to continue to exist as a free republic, continue this war un- 
til this German power for aggression is shattered completely for all 
time. 



IV 
MUST FREE OPPRESSED PEOPLES OF AUSTRIA 

Austria-Hungary must be dismembered before the United States and 
its Allies can make a lasting peace with Germany. 

This may seem a startling assertion, in view of the fact that this 
country did not declare war on Austria-Hungary until months after it 
was drawn into the conflict with Germany, and that now, as always, 
Germany is recognized as our chief enemy. One might ask, "Why not 
dismember Germany?", and many probably will so ask unless they stop 
to think what the objects of this war really are. 

In the first place this is a war of democracy against autocracy. 

The cardinal principle of democracy is that the people of any given 
nationality shall have the right to choose their own form of government. 

Austria-Hungary is not a nation in the true sense of the word. It is 
a conglomeration of peoples of several races and tongues ruled against 
their will by two dominant races — the Germans and Magyars — under a 
historically corrupt and incompetent dynasty. 

These subject peoples, mostly Slavic in blood, constitute a clear 
majority of the population of Austria and almost half that of Hungary, 
yet they have no voice in choosing their form of government. If they 
dared raise their voices some would choose union with Italy, some with 
a greater Serbia or Poland, some union with Rumania and some abso- 
lute independence, according to their race and geographical location. 

The same cannot be said of Germany. Barring rather restricted 
areas peopled by unwilling subjects, such as the Poles to the East and 
the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine on the West, which must be lopped 
off when the peace treaty is written, the German Empire consists of a 
homogeneous people of the same race and national aspirations. While 
it may be necessary to assist in a change in the form of government 
which will enable this people to get rid of the Hohenzollern and the 
military aristocracy, any enforced division of the German Empire itself 
which would place portions of its inhabitants under foreign domination 
would be doing the very thing which the United States and her allies 
are fighting against — it would be denying a people the right to choose 
for themselves the state of which they shall form a part. 

That is why we hear no agitation for the dismemberment of Ger- 
many — our arch enemy — while the conviction grows more and more 
that Austria- Hungary, that unfortunate monarchy, must be disrupted 
at the conference table at which the peace treaty is written, if it does 
not fall apart itself before that time. 

"How, then, is the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary necessarily 



12 Our Peril on the Eastern Front 

involved in any consideration of the ambitions of the predatory Ger- 
many that brought on this war?" one may inquire. 

It already has been shown how Germany must be forced to restore 
all that she has taken from Russia either to Russia or to allow the 
peoples of these territories to form their own independent govern- 
ments. It has been demonstrated that Poland, when erected into a free 
state, with no hint of domination, will be a powerful barrier to German 
military and political expansion to the Eastward. 

The setting free of the oppressed peoples of Austria-Hungary, and 
the giving to them permission to unite with nations already in existence 
with which they have national sympathies, or to form their own inde- 
pendent governments, as the case may be, will complete that barrier and 
forever bar Germany from forcible expansion to the Southeast. 

A free Bohemia will take its place beside a free Poland as a buffer 
between Germany and disorganized Russia. A restored and strength- 
ened Rmnania, with the millions of Rmnanians added to those now 
nominally independent, will extend the barrier to the Black Sea, pro- 
vided Ukrainia is fred from German domination. A Greater Serbia, 
with the millions of Jugo-Slavs in the southern parts of Austria and 
Hungary incorporated in it, will be an effectual block to Germany's 
military oneness with Bulgaria and Turkey. 

Thus, and only tlius will the German dream of a Mittel-Europa 
extending from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf, and opening the way for 
further conquests in India emd the Orient, to be followed by a world 
domination, be brought to an end. Only thus will the German people 
be shown that their rulers who have promised them the spoils of a 
conquered world, have misled them, and that their future lies not in 
military and political expansion but in thrift and industry and legiti- 
mate commerce which other nations of the world can respect. 

Austria-Hungary, as now constituted, and Bulgaria and Turkey have 
been reduced to a state of vassalage by Germany as completely as 
though they had been conquered by force of arms. Austria-Hungary 
could not make a separate peace if she wanted to as long as Germany 
remains unbeaten on the Western Front. If she could do so and pre- 
serve her rule over the peoples she now oppresses, she probably would 
be glad to do so. But the time for that has gone by. She would be 
overrim by Germany in a week if she tried it, and the Allied nations 
have already recognized the fact that any peace, to be lasting, must 
remove the causes of friction. The chief cause of friction in Southeast- 
ern Europe now is, and has been for centuries, the struggles of op- 
pressed peoples to escape from their oppressors. There must be no 



Our Peril on the Eastern Front 13 

more oppressors, or, in time, the war will have to be fought all over 
again. 

President Wilson has declared unequivocally for the right of self- 
determination of peoples as one of the conditions of peace. The Allied 
Council of Versailles in June, 1918, pronounced in favor of giving the 
oppressed peoples of Slavic blood held in bondage by Austria their 
liberties. 

Both the President and the Allied diplomats at Versailles realized 
that this war, on which so much blood and treasure has been spent, 
when it is settled must be settled on the basis of right. They see, and 
every American should see, that, if it is not thus settled, the struggle 
will have to be faced once more, after Germany and her allies have had 
time to recuperate, and that when Germany, if allowed to keep its 
Eastern conquests and complete the organization of her vassal states, is 
ready to strike again she will strike in a way that the world cannot 
successfully resist. 



V 

MILLIONS IN AUSTRL\ HELD IN BONDAGE 

Considerably more than half of all tKe people in Austria-Hungary 
are held in bondage — in practical servitude against their will — by the 
two dominant races, the Germans of Austria and the Magyars of Hun- 
gary. 

These bond-people of Austria-Hungary represent eleven national 
groups, and though they form a clear majority of the population, have 
so little voice in the affairs of the empire that they might as well be 
said to have none at all. All are clamoring for their freedom, and all 
would fight for it were they given a chance. But few remain at home 
now except the decrepit old men, the women and the children. Their 
able-bodied men are drafted into the army and forced to fight against 
their will. Thousands are deserting, but so complete is the discipline 
that the majority of them must remain, sandwiched in between Hungar- 
ians and Germans, until the ramshackle empire falls to pieces or is 
dismembered at the peace council table. 

In 1910, the time of taking the last census before the war, there were 
in Austria proper 9,950,266 Germans belonging to the dominant race 
of the Austrian half of the dual monarchy and 10,050,575 Magyars 
formed the dominant race in Hungary. They ruled over the following 

subject peoples:* In Austria In Hungary 

Czecho-Slovaks 6,435,983 1,967,970 

Poles 4,967,984 

Little Russians 3,518,854 472,587 

Slovenians 1,252,940 

Serbo-Croatians 783,344 2,939,638 

Italians ,. 768,422 

Rumanians 275,115 2,949,027 

In Austria the German population, numbering only 35.58 per cent, 
has a clear majority in parliament, and treats the Slavs and Latins as 
inferior peoples. In Hungary the Magyar population outnmnbers the 
Slavs only slightly, but gives them few political rights. 

It will be remembered that little over half a century ago the Mag- 
yars themselves were engaged in a terrific struggle for liberty, and were 
only subdued by Austria through the assistance of the then Czar of 
Russia. The dual monarchy was then formed, and the Magyars were 
placated by the granting to them rule over portions of the various Slav 
races. From a people battling for freedom they have since been trans- 
formed into a people who apparently enjoy the oppression of others as 



•statistics from the Statesman's Year Book, 1917, census of 1910. These 
are official statistics, which favor the ruliiag nations. For instance, nearly 
all the 1,300,000 Jews in Austria are classed as Germans, while in Hungary 
not only the Jews, numbering 960,000, but almost everyone else able to 
speak the Magyar language, are classed as Magyars. 



Our Peril on the Eastern Front 15 

much as the Germans themselves. 

Most of the Slavs in the dual monarchy came under the Hapsburg 
rule originally, because of the invasion of Europe by the Turks. The 
Holy Roman Empire, of which Austria is the decrepit descendant, was 
the bulwark of Europe against Mohammedanism in those days. 

Bohemia, threatened with Mohammedan conquest, allowed herself to 
fall into the power of the Hapsburgs. Hungary was "rescued" from the 
Turk. As the years and centuries went on other territories were "freed," 
the last ones to be thus liberated being Bosnia and Herzegovina, which 
were only f®rmally incorporated into the Austrian empire in 1909. The 
inhabitants of these two provinces are almost purely Serbian in blood 
and language, and the seizing of them by Austria would in all likeli- 
hood have provoked a world war at that time had it not been for the 
fact that Russia, tlie protector of the little Slav nationalities, was so 
weakened by the Japanese war and torn by revolutionary movements 
that it dared not to take up arms. 

Bohemia, with the neighboring provinces of Moravia and Slovakia 
forming the most compact and numerous group of Slavs in the em- 
pire, familiarly known as Czecho-Slovaks, was, before the war, the best 
educated, the most prosperous and the most highly developed part of 
Austria-Hungary, in spite of the fact that the Bohemians were under 
the domination of the Germans of the empire. They clung tenaciously, 
however, to their desire for freedom, and when the war broke out Bo- 
hemia was soon a seething mass of suppressed revolt. 

Five years ago it might have been possible to placate the Slav races 
of Austria- Hungary by giving them equal rights with their German and 
Magyar oppressors. Now it would be impossible. The avenue of 
expansion for Germany to the Southeast must be closed forever. The 
just national aspirations of oppressed peoples must be satisfied, or the 
Balkan problem will remain after this war just what it was before, a 
continual menace to the peace of the world. 

It was this Balkan unrest which brought about the Sarajevo murders 
and which gave the pretext for this war. All the Central Powers were 
looking for was a pretext. They will continue to look for pretexts in 
the future unless their military power is shattered completely and the 
idea that they can enforce their will on subject races is removed forever. 

Already the experience of the Central Powers in subjecting other 
nations, a bit at a time, has been such that they now think they can 
treat the -whole world that way. For half a century they have been 
getting ready for this course of action. Now they have definitely em- 
barked on it. They have in their grasp conquered territory and subject 
populations of sufficient magnitude to assure them of practical success 
if they are allowed to keep what they have gained. 

They must give up all they have won and more or no spot on the 
earth will be safe from their aggression in the future. 



VI 
AUSTRIAN SLAVS DIE BY THOUSANDS FOR ALLIES 

"If the Austrian Slavs want their freedom so badly, why don't they 
fight for it? Why should we be fighting for their freedom?" 

The answer to the first question is that the Austrian Slavs, thousands 
and tens of thousands of them, ARE fighting for their freedom, and 
fighting more heroically, if possible, than the people of any other 
nation. They are fighting with the French on the West Front, and with 
the Italians; they are fighting with the Serbs in the Balkans, and they 
are fighting alone, surrounded by hostile millions, in Russia. 

Wherever the Slav from Austria fights, he fights under conditions 
more appalling than those of any other soldier. Like other Allies, he 
takes the chance of death as he goes into battle, but he takes more. 
If his army is forced to retreat, the wounded Austrian Slav knows that 
death is his portion if he falls into the hands of the enemy. He will 
be executed as a traitor, because, originally he came from Austria. 
Other wounded may, or may not, be given medical attention and 
allowed to eke out a miserable existence in a prison camp, but the fate 
of the captured Austrian Slav, be he wounded or unwounded, is death. 

At the outbreak of the war, in 1914, it was plain that the Slavs in 
the Austrian armies would not willingly fight against the Entente Allies. 
The Germans knew it and the Magyars knew it. They controlled the 
government, and they at once took steps to see to it that the soldiers 
from Bohemia, Moravia, Croatia, Slavonia, and Bosnia, who numbered 
hundreds of thousands, were so intermixed with German and Magyar 
regiments that they always formed a helpless minority. 

All the disagreeable tasks — the dirty work — of the army were given 
to these Slav troops. They were constantly watched, and constantly 
abused. They were put into the firing line where artillery fire was 
hottest, and deliberately used as cannon fodder. When they went "over 
the top" in a charge they went in small bodies, sandwiched in between 
Germans and Magyars, instead of in whole divisions and army corps. 

But all of these precautions could not prevent the Slav soldiers from 
carrying out their purpose to desert to the Entente Allies wherever pos- 
sible. Individuals, small groups, and even, on occasion, whole regi- 
ments passed over to the Serbs and the Russians, not to seek security in 
internment camps, but to turn and fight their Austrian oppressors. 
More than once Czech regiments revolted, and were shot down in cold 
blood by German and Magyar troops. Hundreds were mown down in 
pitched battles by machine gun fire, and others were executed by firing 
squads. 



Our Peril on the Eastern Front 17 

N»T«rtk«l«M5 at th« tim« Austria was making its first bij invasion 
of Serbia, enough Slav soldiers deserted to contribute very greatly to 
the Austrian debacle and disastrous retreat. The same was true on the 
Russian front when the Russians were making their great drives through 
Galicia. It was plain that the Austrian troops could not stand before 
the Russians because so many of the Austria-Hungarian soldiers were 
of Slav blood, and would not fight their friends. 

So numerous were these desertions to the Russians that it was esti- 
mated, at the time of the ignominious peace that Germany forced on 
Russia, that there were from 60,000 to 100,000 of them in the Russian 
army. The Bolshevist government first agreed to permit these forces, 
now generally spoken of as Czecho-Slovaks, to keep their arms, and 
to transport them to Vladivostock, on the Pacific Ocean, some 9,000 
miles from the fighting front, that they might embark for a journey 
around the world to appear as foes of Germany on the Western Front. 
Great Britain made plans to furnish the ships. 

But Germany interfered. It caused the Bolshevist government to 
rescind this order of safe conduct, and to interpose armed resistance to 
the efforts of the Czecho-Slovaks to reach the Pacific. It went further 
and induced the Bolshevist government to arm German and Austrian 
prisoners in Siberia to assist the disorganized Russian forces which 
were unable to stay the eastward mach of the Czecho-Slovak armies. 

That is how the Czecho-Slovak forces which we hear so much of 
today came to be in Siberia. Nothing in all history approaches the 
heroism of these little bands. Surrounded by enemies in overwhelming 
numbers they continued to fight their way eastward. City after city 
in Siberia fell into their hands. They fought the Russians and they 
fought the German and Austrian veterans whom the Russians armed. 
They won battles against overwhelming forces, and they are still hold- 
ing out, though thousands of miles from home and ringed by enemies. 
Their sole desire was to get back to the battle front, even by a journey 
around the world, that they may fight with the Allies and help to 
liberate their helpless relatives at home. 

These are the heroes that the Italian, French and English govern- 
ments have recognized as tlie army of an independent and allied nation 
and that the United States and Japan are now moving to aid in Siberia. 
We cannot permit the Russians to hand tens of thousands of them over 
to the Central Powers for certain execution, any more than we can per- 
mit the Central Powers permanently to control Russia and Siberia. 

Thousands of these Czecho-Slovaks have died fighting for the Allied 
cause. Thousands of others have died the death of traitors because 
they would not fight the Allies, Thousands more, held down by the 



18 Our Peril on the Eastern Front 

severest terrorism the world has ever known, are only waiting for an 
opportiinity to desert and join the Allied armies. 

They have proved, beyond all question, their willingness to fight 
for their own freedom at every opportunity. After such heroic proof 
would it not be the basest ingratitude for the Allied nations to make a 
peace which did not free from bondage the Bohemians, the Slovaks, the 
Croats, the Serbs, and all other groups which are held against their 
will in Austria-Hungary? 

Our President has said that we are fighting to make the world safe 
for Democracy. There can be no democracy in Southeastern Europe 
as long as millions of Slavs are held in bondage, and there can be no 
lasting peace until these loyal friends of the Allied cause are erected 
into strong independent nations and the German plan of expansion to 
the eastward is definitely blocked. 



APPENDIX 

The Slav Peoples, Who They Are, Where They Live, 

and Their Historic Claims to Independent Existence 

THE CZECHOSLOVAKS 

The word, "Czecho-Slovak," is a comparatively new one, brought 
into general use since the Russian revolution. It has been called to the 
attention of a wondering world by that little band of fighters who, since 
the East Front crumbled away in the great Russian collapse, have been 
the principal barrier to German penetration of the vast interior of that 
once mighty empire, 

Czech and Slovak are different forms of the same ancient Slav word. 
The Czechs and the Slovaks are the same people in blood and in lan- 
guage, but have been struggling along for centuries under different op- 
pressors. The Czechs inhabiting Bohemia and Moravia have been under 
Austrian rule fof some four hundred years, and those in Silesia have 
long been subject to Germany. The Slovaks, on the contrary, are the 
inhabitants of the province of Slovakia, which has been long under 
Magyar domination in Hungary, and of a portion of the province of 
Galicia, which is likewise inhabited by Poles and Ruthenes. 

The Czechs number some six and a half millions, and the Slovaks 
something like two and a half millions. They composed the Slav tribes 
which, centuries ago, penetrated furthest into middle Europe. It was 
they who most strenuously resisted pressure from the East when the 
Huns — those amateurs whom Attila led — invaded Europe, and from the 
West when the Germans, who in this Twentieth Century of Christianity 
have given a new meaning to the word "Hun," first began to exercise the 
"Drang nach Osten" which today has set the world aflame. The result 
is that they were cut off from their Slav brothers to the South by the 
German wedge and the Hungarian wedge which came together on the 
border between Austria and Hungary. 

The Czecho-Slovaks remain a Slavic wedge extending far into the 
heart of Teutonic Mittel-Europa. Their sons are fighting in the armies 
of all the Allied nations, while the Czecho-Slovak army in Russia and 
Siberia has conducted itself with so much bravery and diplomatic wis- 
dom as well that it has been recognized as a belligerent by Britain, 
France, Italy and finally by the United States. 

Away back in the middle of the Fourteenth century Prague, the 
capital of Bohemia, became the seat of one of the earliest of the great 
universities of Middle Europe. Bohemia was famous for the learning 
and prosperity of its people, students going there from all Europe to 
absorb the culture that had ebbed so low elsewhere because of the 
feudal wars and the instability of governments. A good illustration of 
the commanding position Bohemia had obtained in educational matters 
is the fact that in 1638 Johann Amos Comenius, noted Bohemian relig- 
ious leader and secular educator, was called by the government of Swe- 
den to set up a scheme for the management of the schools of that coun- 
try, and a few years later was invited to join a commission that the 
English parliament then intended to appoint to reform the system of 
education in England. 

For two centuries Bohemia maintained its lead in the intellectual 
awakening which was overspreading Europe. 

In 1526 the Czechs and the Austrians, both menaced by the Turks, 



entered into an alliance on terras of equality, with the Hapsburgs as 
joint rulers; but almost immediately the Hapsburgs began to treat Bo- 
hemia as a subject province. In 1618 the Czechs rose in revolt and were 
crushed in a disastrous defeat in 1620. The Austrian Germans uprooted 
the Czech aristocracy and filled their places with foreign adventurers, 
and the Czech nation, as a nation, practically ceased to exist. 

Little was heard of the Czech nation for more than two hundred 
years. Its very memory almost was lost. But, in the middle of the 
Nineteenth Century there was a renaissance of national feeling. In 
spite of all persecutions and repressive measures the sterling Czech 
character again asserted itself, and Bohemia, as of old, once more be- 
came a seat of learning. The percentage of illiteracy in Bohemia is 
lower than anywhere else in Austria-Hungary, and even lower than in 
Germany itself. Industrially Bohemia became the most developed and 
prosperous part of Austria- Hungary, and remained so until the out- 
break of the world war. 

In spite of many provocations Bohemia remained essentially loyal 
to the Hapsburgs during the latter half of the Nineteenth century. It 
began to clamor for its rights, but would have been satisfied with equal- 
ity within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

For twenty years or more, however, there has been a growing feel- 
ing among the Czechs and Slovaks that they could never hope for justice 
from their German and Hungarian oppressors, who, with the greatest 
severity, tried to crush out all revival of national feeling. More and 
more they were convinced that only absolute independence would ever 
bring them the justice to which they were entitled. 

Thus it was that the opening of the world war found the Czecho- 
slovaks ripe for revolt. They were, of course, drafted into the Austro- 
Hungarian armies, like all other peoples within the dual monarchy, but 
they would not willingly fight their Slav brothers in Russia and Serbia. 
They seized every opportunity to surrender, but not from cowardice, for 
they immediately enlisted in the armies of the' foes of the Central Pow- 
ers. Even when Russia collapsed the Czecho-Slovaks continued to fight 
with great bravery — a bravery which has at last won them recognition 
from the Allied powers — a recognition which virtually amounts to a 
declaration that the terms of peace which the nations of the Entente 
Alliance will impose will insist on the creation of an independent 
Czecho-Slovakia. 

The United States was the last of the great powers among the Entente 
Allies to grant this recognition, having acted on September 3, 1918. Its 
recognition of the Czecho-Slovak State, however, went further than that 
of any of the other powers in that it recognized the Czecho-Slovak Na- 
tional Council as the de facto government of this new state, and ac- 
corded to Thomas G. Masaryk, president of this council, who is making 
his headquarters in Washington, the right to represent the Czecho-Slo- 
vaks in a diplomatic way with the American government. 

The moral qualities and political sagacity of the Bohemians are tes- 
tified to by the fact that in 1871 the Bohemian Diet, alone among the 
representative deliberative bodies of the world, had the wisdom and 
courage to protest against the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine by Prussia. 

THE JUGOSLAVS 

"Jugo" is the Slav word for "South." The Jugo-Slavs are the Slavs 
who were cut off from their more northerly brothers by the Huns and 



the Germans. They, at one time, inhabited practically all the Balkans 
and that portion of Southern Hungary and Austria around the Adriatic 
Sea, extending clear to the Alps at what is now the Italian frontier. 

It was these Southern Slavs who felt the full force of the Turkish 
invasion of Europe. For centuries those who resided in Bulgaria 
and Serbia languished under Turkish rule. In the Fourteenth and 
Fifteenth centuries there were what almost amounted to national migra- 
tions into the lands of Austria and Hungary. The migrating Slavs were 
welcomed by the Hapsburgs, and were promised lands and an autono- 
mous government time and again. They were permitted to form the 
border guard against the Turks and to do most of the hard fighting, but 
they never reaped their reward. They were used, time and again by the 
Hapsburgs, as pawns in their various controversies with the Magyars, 
and time after time, after they had loyally helped to keep the Magyars 
in subjection, they were handed over to the latter for persecution in a 
settlement to appease Magyar anger. 

In the Nineteenth Century, after the Serbs in Serbia had obtained 
their freedom from Turkey, their blood brothers under the Austro-Hun- 
garian yoke began to look to them for the freedom which they had never 
been able to obtain from the Hapsburgs. This resulted in more and 
more persecution from the Magyars of Hungary and the Germans of 
Austria until, at the time of the outbreak of the war, the Jugo-Slavs, 
likewise, were ripe for revolt, and, like the Czecho-Slovaks farther 
north, refused, wherever possible, to fight in the Austrian armies. 

At present the Jugo-Slavs — some 12,000,000 in number — inhabit the 
Austrian provinces of Goritzia, along the Italian border, the neighbor- 
ing provinces of Carniola and Istria and part of Styria; Croatia and 
Slavonia in Hungary, Dalmatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as 
Serbia proper and Montenegro. Along the Adriatic Sea there is a little 
fringe of Italian population, especially in Trieste and a few other cities, 
but the great mass of population is Slavic. 

All of this territory, united under one Slav government — a greater 
Serbian kingdom of republic, as the case may be — would form a state 
of sufficient size and population to check effectually the German dream 
of a German Mittel-Europa extending to the Bosporus. 

Just how far the plans for uniting all the Jugo-Slavs under one 
government have gone among themselves is shown by the fact that on 
July 20, 1917, there was issued from the Island of Corfu, where the 
Serbian government had taken up its seat, what is known as "The 
Declaration of Corfu." 

This provided for an establishment of "The Kingdom of the Serbs, 
Croats and Slovenes" as a constitutional, democratic parliamentary 
monarchy with the Karageorgevitch dynasty at its head. It made defi- 
nite provision for equality of the different religions and of the flags and 
coats of arms of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and provided that "the 
territory of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes will comprise all the terri- 
tory where our nation lives in compact masses without discontinuity, 
and where it could not be mutilated without injuring the vital inter- 
ests of the community." 

This leaves room for compromise along the borders where the popu- 
lations are intermixed with Italians or people of other nationalities. 

The declaration was signed by Nikola Pashitch, president of the 
council and minister of foreign affairs of the Kingdom of Serbia, and 
Dr. Anto Trumbic, president of the Jugo-Slav committee. 



Professor Hinko Hinkovic, former member of the Croatian parlia- 
ment, and delegate to the Hungarian parliament, now an exile from his 
native land, is in the United States representing the Jugo-Slavs of Aus- 
tria-Hungary. He is strongly in favor of a union of all the Jugo-Slavs 
under one government. 

THE RUMANIANS 

Rumania took its name, its language and its culture from Ancient 
Rome, and its people are partly Latin in blood. In ancient times their 
country formed the outpost of the Roman Empire toward the East. Ru- 
mania, like the other Balkan countries, was long under the domination 
of the Turk. It was liberated part at a time with the result that some 
3,000,000 Rumanians who were delivered from the Moslems before the 
remainder of their brethren, found themselves subject to the domination 
of the Hapsburgs and residing in the province of Transylvania and part 
of Bukowina. 

It was to liberate these Rumanians from the Magyar yoke that Ru- 
mania entered the war. The fatal peace, which Rumania was forced to 
make, following the collapse of Russia, is well known. Nominally free, 
Rumania itself is now under Teutonic domination, and the hope of the 
Rumanians of Hungary of joining their brethren rests solely upon an 
Allied victory in the West which shall force Austria-Hungary to give up 
these provinces to a really independent Rumania which will then be 
large and strong enough to keep the Teutons away from the Black Sea 
and to bar for them the route to the Orient. 

THE CASE OF POLAND 

The wrongs of Poland are too well known to need extended treat- 
ment here. It will be remembered how Poland was dismembered, three 
times, by Prussia, Russia and Austria. In each case the dismember- 
ment was purely land grabbing. The Poles once formed one of the 
most powerful nations of Europe. They were invaded on three sides 
by strong neighbors, and their lands and their independence taken 
away without any excuse whatever. 

In territory the largest part fell to the share of Russia. Prussia, 
however, followed out its policy of taking the most valuable part for 
strategic reasons, and seized the Baltic coast line. To Austria went 
what is now the Polish part of Galicia. 

The Poles long dreamed of and occasionally fought for the recon- 
struction of their independent nation, but at last it began to seem 
that this could never be achieved, and the Austrian Poles, at least, had 
become almost reconciled to continued existence imder a foreign yoke. 

The world war, however, threw the whole of Russian Poland under 
German domination. Austria, likewise, is completely dominated by 
Germany. The sufferings of Poland under the German invasion made 
the whole world stand aghast. It is now seen that the German policy 
is deliberately to depopulate Poland, so that it will not have the trouble 
trying to Germanize it that it did with the portions of Poland that orig- 
inally fell to Prussia's share. 

With all Poland in Germany's grasp, directly or indirectly, and 
Allied victory certain on the West Front, nothing short of the creation 
of a completely independent Poland, strong enough to form an effectual 
barrier against Germany's expansion toward the East, should satisfy the 
Allied nations. 



Professor Hinko Hinkovic, former member of the Croatian parlia- 
ment, and delegate to the Hungarian parliament, now an exile from hi. 



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Clarence L. Speed has for many 
years been engaged in newspaper 
work in Chicago. He long served 
as city editor of the Chicago Rec- 
ord-Herald, and as financied edi- 
tor, city editor and editorial writ- 
er of the Chicago Evening Post. 
The nature of his work made 
necessary on his part a careful 
study of the Great War from the 
day of its inception. 



Copies may be obtained of the 
War Committee of the Union 
League Club of Chicago, at the 
following prices, delivery pre- 
paid: 

Single copies $ .05 

One hundred copies 2.00 

One thousand copies 15.00 



4SK,„i„';°~«ess 



020 9i«|f« 



